Will the kemonomimi encounter Alien Ranch Story?

Ultimately, you'll run out of all your jet fuel on the spot and have to wait for rescue. That's considered lucky. If you're unlucky, you'll just head straight into the deep universe and never return. I reckon very few people will even be able to find out where you've gone.

Even Colombia's aerospace industry trains astronauts by selecting immigrants from other races whenever possible, because Liberians are indeed not well-suited for spaceflight.

"I should be fine."

Not all birds have the ability to orient themselves using geomagnetism and gravity. Conversely, not all Liberians rely on this innate navigational ability. Some Liberians rely on their eyes, such as Himer and the White-faced Owl, which can move around normally in space. However, this also brings new troubles. Their sleep schedules are quickly and completely disrupted, and they have to use caffeine and sleeping pills to control and adjust them.

"Hmm, so what about your daily routine?"

"It's perfectly normal. The doctor said I'm perfectly normal." After all, I work in the Rhine Life Energy Department. It would be strange if my schedule wasn't regular. If I didn't concentrate, I could turn myself into a fried bird at any moment.

"Hmm... Alright, then please head to Test Pod Two in three weeks. If there are no problems, Researcher Elena, you will be assigned to the ship on the 11th of next month."

Whether she can go to the space station depends on the final test results. Many staff members from Colombia have been eliminated and can only do other work on the ground or sit on the sidelines temporarily, waiting for Kazdel to come up with any new solutions.

Back in the lab after registering, Dorothy was already working, though at a very slow pace, slowly perusing the information and research data provided by Kazdel using a personal terminal.

"Miss Elena, why are you so late?"

"Ah, I saw some interesting things along the way, so I lingered a little longer. Speaking of which, Kazdel's technological development is also progressing rapidly, not inferior to Columbia at all." The little blue bird liked this vibrant atmosphere, especially the exploration and pursuit of new knowledge, rather than clinging to those outdated traditions as if they were precious treasures.

Tradition is a treasure of civilization only when it is in a museum; outside of museums, it is just dross and obstacles. People cannot ignore or forget history, but they also cannot live in history.

However, by this standard, there are too many countries in Terra that live only in museums and history. Great Yan is one, Ursus is half, Victoria is another, and Rembiton and Sherag are even more so, having plunged headfirst into the past and never emerging again.

If Da Yan and Victoria still have a chance to awaken, then Rembiton and Sherag, Little Blue Bird thinks they are pretty much in a state of giving up. How to put it, although Da Yan and Victoria are conservative overall, there are still people in the country who are ambitious and enterprising.

However, Rembitox has almost been turned into useless people by their abundant resources, and their current predicament makes them miss the past even more. Although escaping is shameful, it is easy, isn't it?

As for Iberia, it was originally a staunch conservative, but now, thanks to Agor, it has also become an ambitious force. Recently, they have even started calling for the reconstruction of the Golden Fleet and the recapture of their lost technology and wealth in the open sea.

"It's just a bit too new." Dorothy doesn't deny that the technology here is developing rapidly. For example, when she passed by their aerospace industry exhibition hall during the day, she saw four or five completely different models of spacecraft, all of which were updated models completed within the last year or two.

In a sense, this speed is a bit too fast for scientific purposes. Columbia has also assembled its strongest team to study spacecraft. It can't be said that they have achieved nothing. At the very least, they have actually built a rocket, even if it is only equivalent to the kind of sounding rocket at the very front of a museum. But they really did it.

However, since the Colombian media has not boasted about the results of the test launch, it must have gone wrong, and it must be a huge mess that cannot be resolved in a short time. Otherwise, given the nature of those unscrupulous Colombian businessmen, they would have used even the slightest hint of trouble as a gimmick to boast about selling shares.

"Dr. Franks, what are you looking at?"

"A theoretical research paper on the interaction and coherence of source energy particles, which is very inspiring." There are just too many unfamiliar terms, so I need to look them up slowly. However, it doesn't use too many obscure mathematical tools, and the researchers have only scratched the surface.

"It's hard to imagine that this was written by an ordinary graduate student in Kazdale." Although it did not use overly obscure theories and mathematical research tools, the breadth and depth of the concepts involved are not something a college student could write.

Dorothy once considered whether she had hired a ghostwriter, but after thinking about it carefully, she realized that someone with that level of skill could apply for an independent research lab on their own, so there was no need for her to work as a ghostwriter to earn a meager living, and she might even be cheated out of her money by the fairy.

"Speaking of papers, the engineering and electrical engineering fields here don't seem as impressive as I thought." This is probably because she only recruited genuine Kazdel students, whose level, compared to Terra International, is only slightly above average. This level is only possible because of the cramming she received from Lao Xia.

"However, their expertise in biology and agronomy is truly remarkable. I visited their ecosphere experimental area before, and it was really impressive." Inside a dome-shaped sphere, there are several terrain modules, including deserts, oceans, forests, swamps, and caves, and the organisms on these modules can all grow normally.

“Indeed, they are very advanced in biology and medicine,” Dorothy nodded. “Speaking of which, did you get your medicine?”

“Take it! Enough for a month.” Little Bluebird pulled a medicine box from her backpack. This was a treatment for Oripathy developed by Kazdel. For patients like her with stage 3 Oripathy who had crystals on their skin, it could only relieve and suppress symptoms, but could not cure the disease.

"Um, how much?"

"Oh, they didn't charge me? Is it the final settlement?" As a senior researcher at Rhine Life, she also has medical insurance provided by the company. Moreover, her Oripathy is considered a work injury, so she only has to bear about 3% of the costs herself. Usually, she pays at the end of the month and then has a physical examination on the first of the following month to confirm that her medical insurance can cover the entire month's medication needs.

"No, the group hasn't arranged medical insurance for you during your business trips. In fact, the group has temporarily frozen all medical and accident insurance deductions for everyone, so theoretically you'll have to pay for the medications yourself here."

"Hmm, so the medicines here in Kazdel are provided free of charge?" Actually, they weren't provided free of charge, but the little blue bird was too lively and outgoing, pestering researchers on the road with questions and chatting happily with professors in several research labs.

So when she went to pick up her medication, she was mistaken for a new intern at the research institute. They gave her the month's worth of medication and even asked for her name. I guess if she doesn't correct it herself or if they find out at the end of the quarter when they do the accounting and auditing that they've given her the extra benefit for one person, she'll probably keep receiving it.

Even at the end of the quarter, due to high staff turnover and improper storage of medicines, few people would seriously check for small discrepancies such as having an extra or missing box. Of course, if you were unlucky enough to encounter those stingy people from the finance department coming in person, then things would be different.

"Who knows? But the medicines here..." Little Bluebird recalled that most of the people queuing to get medicines at the infirmary looked relaxed, so it shouldn't be a heavy financial burden. "They should be very cheap."

“Not necessarily. In fact, I’ve seen it at the port’s duty-free shops. Although it’s cheaper than what’s sold in Colombia, it’s still not a price that ordinary people can afford.” Dorothy noticed this keenly because of her background. “Otherwise, Colombian settlers would be coming in droves to buy cheap anti-Ore disease drugs.”

"Have you considered surgically removing the crystals in your foot?" While there is no real cure for Oripathy, Kazdel does offer a surgical method to remove them, making one appear outwardly normal. If an expensive slow-release device is implanted and Platinum Health Insurance is purchased, one can remain normal for life.

"I don't need it for now, it doesn't really affect me anyway." The crystals are on her calves and ankles, resembling finger marks, and don't affect her daily life. The only problem is that she needs to wear high-top boots to cover them up.

Even with drug treatment, people infected in stage three or higher are still easily discriminated against and resisted by the public. Covering up a little can help maintain a stable daily life.

"Alright, your break is over. It's time for you to get down to business. Here are some documents from the engineering headquarters. You'd better take a quick look at them before tonight."

"Okay," Xingyuan nodded. She was used to this kind of sudden information. She sat down at her workstation, opened the terminal which was a little different from the one at Columbia, and familiarized herself with the relevant software training before leaving, so she wouldn't stare blankly at the almost dull metal panel.

Her slender fingers pressed on the smooth metal disc. No buttons were needed; the information displayed on her retina automatically slid along via neural pulses. She was then astonished by the bizarre blueprints and engineering drawings.

"Oh dear!" the little bluebird exclaimed. "What are all these things? Is this how they work?"

It's beyond chaotic. In several similar circuit diagrams, there are five different fuse specifications in the same location. Although the performance parameters seem to be similar, the differences in size and material are huge, judging from the attached diagrams.

The main reason for this situation is that there are not enough General Electric components found in the Ark spare parts library, and Terra's current industrial level is not enough to perfectly replicate it. Furthermore, Xia's nano printer cannot perfectly process the Originium structure and has limited production capacity.

Therefore, theoretically there should be five types of fuses with uniform specifications and parameters: one is the original product of the Former People, one is the product of Kazdel Labs, one is the product manufactured by Columbia, one is manufactured by Xia's equipment, and one is the Star Alliance standard. Moreover, the shapes, sizes, materials, and lifespans of the above five types are all different, and the parameters can only be said to be barely consistent.

This means that on the Ark, there would be five different internal designs and sizes for the same junction box for the same function. Even Pudding, who is good at organizing blueprints and thinks about electrical technology, would give up. This is not something that carbon-based bioenergy can handle.

As for the energy transmission lines, they left Little Bluebird completely bewildered. She couldn't understand what all those complicated jumpers, adapters, and extensions were for. Shouldn't her experience and methods have led to the optimal configuration, minimizing energy loss while maximizing material and engineering savings through the shortest possible transmission length?

Looking at this blueprint, it seems that there will be a lot of drilling, demolition, and trenching work involved. Moreover, the route is winding and twisting, like a bunch of earthworms huddled together, which makes one's head spin just by looking at it.

The reason for this phenomenon is that the original civilian equipment to be installed on the path was permanently abandoned, and the pit needs to be used to install replacement Covenant equipment. Since Covenant equipment does not use Originium lines for power transmission, it requires additional wiring and installation of an independent power supply system. The line that could have been powered by a single trunk line must now be bypassed by this installation pit.

As for the fact that the spare cables made by the early inhabitants were insufficient, it was common to have to repeatedly rewire, extend, and transfer them. Not to mention that the cable wells all needed to be dug again. The interior of the Ark is now like a huge construction site, with the sounds of electric drills and other engineering and renovation equipment never stopping.

When the little bluebird finally found the energy storage and power generation system, it breathed a sigh of relief. It felt like being alone in the desert, with the sun blazing and the glittering sand making your eyes dizzy, when suddenly you see a spring and an oasis.

Compared to the despair of those engineering circuit diagrams, the power generation and energy storage systems that she was actually responsible for installing and improving were perfectly normal, with standard, textbook-like designs and circuits.

According to her initial estimate, if the Columbia laboratory and engineering workshops were located directly next to this power generation and storage system and connected one-to-one, without having to go through the large number of engineering areas along the way, the workload of the entire space test area's power engineering could be reduced by more than 99%.

This still includes the on-site construction time. However, this is just a dream. Now she needs to sort out the huge mess of problems to create a power supply line for the Columbia sector and solve all the problems along the way, including substation, distribution, protection and maintenance design.

This relegated her primary job—developing a new generation of electrical equipment, especially that usable in space, through her collaboration with Kazdel—to the back burner after these preparatory "odd jobs," and the learning costs became virtually limitless.

"Did Kazdel hire several subcontractors to design it together? Or did their design institute recently have a fight?" If they didn't hire subcontractors, then the only explanation is that Kazdel Engineering Design Institute was putting on a "chaotic show," with the designers using their fists to defend their creative work.

Otherwise, it's hard to explain how something with completely different design concepts, specifications, materials, and technical theories, yet all having the same function, and even the same electronic and electrical equipment in the same location, all concentrated on the same rough sketch, could pass the review and leave the design institute.

Of course, it's also possible that Kazdel simply doesn't have a system for reviewing and approving drawings?

"Moreover, the power generation technology is different."

"At least they separated the different types of generators and batteries." This is why Little Bluebird actually thinks that this behavior, which should have been criticized by the head of the engineering department, is even worthy of affirmation and praise.

If we followed their route map and randomly inserted things everywhere... oh, they haven't inserted things randomly yet, they're just currently repairing the early construction project, and the subsequent blueprints from the Covenant haven't been sent to the construction department yet.

When the bypassed slots begin to be used to install Covenant equipment, Little Bluebird will see randomly inserted generators, batteries, transformers, and distribution boxes. Moreover, these four items are likely not of the same specifications or technical principles as the two generators and batteries she is currently seeing.

Currently, one is the Ancient Ones Originium Reactor, and the other is the Modern Terra Reactor. The portable nuclear reactor used by the Covenant hasn't been installed yet.

Chapter Ninety Filters

Chapter 90

"Aa ...

She felt that she wasn't there to do research and explore new worlds, but to clean up messes and deal with such catastrophic situations. She thought that this kind of work should be done by an engineering assistant.

The work that was originally scheduled to be done with Dorothy, using the silvery sand-like substance in Kazdel's new work, which they named "Etheric Flow," to develop a new source energy-electric energy conversion system and energy transfer system, is now completely unavailable. Fortunately, Dorothy's progress is also slow; she is currently still in the stage of organizing data, reading papers, and understanding theoretical design ideas.

However, she herself would have to do this kind of work all over again later, and she still didn't have enough time. But this lousy job at hand just wouldn't be finished.

Without fixing the power system, the Columbia laboratory couldn't operate; without fixing the internal engineering modules of the space city, even the laboratory installation couldn't begin. The hopes of the entire village rested on her shoulders, and the pressure was immense.

"Couldn't they have done an overall plan before starting construction?!" Of course, they did do an overall plan, but both plans were somewhat mismatched with the actual situation. To be more precise, either plan would have led to the current situation. The problem is that neither Kazdel nor Terrans had the ability to implement either plan, so they could only interweave them.

The conflicts, omissions, and unsolvable technical problems here require a separate, specialized solution plan. To put it bluntly, it's like adding more water and more flour, or adding more flour and more water, and patching individual problems. As for what to do if the patches overlap and cause problems, that's almost never taken into account.

In the doctor's words, everyone knows that the Ark only needs to be used once. As long as there are no problems when it leaves the Terra system, it doesn't matter if there are problems later.

Because the majority of the flight time is spent in zero-gravity inertial gliding or jump flight, the engine only needs to maintain two working cycles. The rest is just a matter of ensuring that the power and control supply to the life support and circulation systems are not compromised.

To ensure nothing goes wrong, this part was completely dismantled and replaced entirely with Covenant's standardized products, which are the most uniform and standardized in terms of specifications across the entire Ark. As for what to do if the Ark's own control system malfunctions, the Doctor's solution is to design enough escape pods and ejection pods, so that if all else fails, they can simply jump ship when passing by the target planet.

Although this would lead to shortages of resources and technology for the immigrants, abandoning the Ark meant giving up a large number of early engineering modules and survival modules, allowing them to maintain only a minimum standard of living, and even forcing the majority of people to be cryogenically frozen, relying on a small number of people to explore new planets.

However, that was a last resort after the Ark went out of control. In other words, for the Doctor, as long as the spaceship could start smoothly, it was acceptable if it couldn't stop. Therefore, the current chaos at the construction site was still within an acceptable range.

If you only need a certain electrical device to run once, or if you only need it to stay powered on until it crashes, then no matter how many patches and fixes are added, it can still be used.

In the Ark, at the Sector 1 Energy Control Center, facing the object before them, both Kroos and the Stranger fell silent. "Please?"

"No, please go ahead." Both of them were covered in cold sweat, like two prisoners awaiting their death sentence, while in front of them was just an ordinary control panel—the main switch.

Although the partition test currently has a lot of minor issues, it's not enough to cause an explosion or fire. However, there are many instances where the individual modules are all functioning normally, but the combined system fails to run. Therefore, now is the time to test the stability of the sector master control program and the power network.

Of course, safety is guaranteed here; two people won't be blown to bits. But safety outside of here cannot be guaranteed. Everyone on the construction site has temporarily evacuated to a safe area outside the ark to wait. However, the thought that closing the gate could mean certain death still puts immense psychological pressure on people.

After some back and forth, Kroos, as the head of Rhodes Island's engineering department, had no choice but to accept the task with a heavy heart. "Don't worry, don't worry, everything has been tested, there shouldn't be any problems." Kroos opened the cover, quickly used the central control system to turn on the power to each area, and finally closed the main switch, connecting the entire power grid.

The light bulbs in the control room flickered a few times, and some lighting equipment inside the Ark was burned out by a sudden power surge, bursting into bursts of sparks. But no matter what, the current sector did light up one after another, and the equipment installed in each area began to perform self-checks and self-repairs.

"Phew~" Kroos breathed a sigh of relief. There was a problem, but it wasn't serious; it was still within acceptable limits...

"Boom!" The workers on the outer platform stared in disbelief as something separated from the mushroom-shaped ark body, followed by multiple explosions and flashes of electricity. Even more terrifying was that the entire power grid had not stopped working and remained brightly lit throughout the area.

It's like discovering that half of the parts of your alarm clock flew off after it was turned on, but the thing is still running; or like randomly deleting some code from a program, but it's still running.

And so far, there haven't been any major bugs. This is much more terrifying than having something short-circuit and burn out after you turn on the computer, and then the power grid disconnects. This means that either the thing that was blown up was unnecessary, or the power grid itself is unnecessary.

Furthermore, we now need to investigate what caused the explosion, why it happened, and if it was equipment belonging to our ancestors, whether it was necessary, and if so, whether it should be replaced or simply bypassed.

"Fire! Fire! Put it out quickly!" Fires broke out everywhere inside the ark, and explosions began to occur frequently, entering a chain reaction of explosions. The good news was that some of the projects that were giving Little Bluebird a headache could be replaced with more standardized and regular modules. The bad news was that the hybridization of these things had increased, and their stability had also decreased—because those that were obviously blown away were still manageable.

It's hard to say about those things inside the walls that were damaged by explosions, fires, or overloads but didn't show any signs of failure immediately. Sometimes, because of the redundancy, they may look fine, but they've actually been broken for a while. By the time you discover it, they're practically ready to be shipped out.

Therefore, it also means that the entire Ark project has not only been greatly delayed, but will also be postponed and have more work to do. Of course, there is also other good news: the independently networked central life support system is working normally and has not been disturbed in any way.

This means that the number of construction workers that the Ark can accommodate will not plummet back to the initial stage, and everyone can continue to do even more lively work on this bustling construction site.

Compared to the hemispherical main hull of the ark, everything is quite stable on the skeleton composed of four long and six short tendrils or straight spikes behind the spherical head.

Because the early inhabitants' part of the project was completely abandoned, the biggest instability of the entire system is the interface for exchanging information and energy with the main body. Now, this area has increased from 10 frames to 12 frames. The two extra frames located at the front and rear of this carrier hull are used to install backup independent power generation and control systems. For this reason, Lao Xia had to increase outsourcing orders.

If the Ark encounters problems, then we can simply detach this transport hull from the Ark and jump ship. The main reason for not turning this section of the hull into a new Ark is that the carrying capacity is insufficient.

This area is primarily for human-carrying personnel, specifically frozen, canned humans. Therefore, the engineering difficulty and workload are relatively low. To put it bluntly, it's similar to the detachable cargo containers on the Windrunner, which present a significant technical challenge. Although independent life support and flight systems have been added, it cannot be considered an independent starship system.

Life support and energy systems cannot sustain long-distance voyages, so the main body of the ark is still necessary. However, if the ark is abandoned, these backup systems are sufficient for it to reliably enter planetary orbit and then drop personnel and supplies.

Moreover, due to the limited carrying capacity, a significant portion of the equipment used by early settlers and high-speed engineering equipment was on the main body of the ship. If the ship were to be abandoned, this part of the equipment would have to be discarded.